The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1887-07-15
CANES AND cRuroHEs
what May Make Good wa,psn,
Stick, and Not a had ti,,t,,.


Stick, and Not a had Crutcb
Yes, SIR" said maker Of art6o.,
limbs in San Francisco, '.men ira VI.
ling to be proud of plain wooden iae.
and empty sleeves. The time has nos
long gone by when l received nume,
Gus orders for legs, with feet attaehoa
wondrously combined of cork. wood
and steel, with springs that moved Il
finely as those in watch; in fact leus
that with their trousers coyerincs
were quite as presentable in good en-,
pany as the lost limbs thcy eplaced
As any attention attracted by fba
somewhat stiff movements Of tbair
owners, the plying observers wonld
say: Poor fellow, he has a touch II
the rheumatism. l can synlpatb;1s
with him. | am troubled with it myseH
occasionally"
Nobody then ever said to friend
who asked him to take a walk: .Yon
must pardon me, but have only ora
leg. He made some different exeuse
illness in his family; indisposition, anv,
thing but inability. But how Il Il nowp
Why, fellow who, half dozen wears
ago, poked his leg into a sewer when
he was staggering to his home a little
before dawn, and fractured it so badly
that no repairs were possible, leans
back in his chair and. resting dirty
stick upon the table, while he quietly
smokes big cigar, says to the compa-
ny: There, gentlemen, is what Shiloh
left me. I'm an old soldier and. damn
me, I'm proud of it "
II believe the manufacturers n
canes are responsible for the decrease
in the sale of artistically made cruteb.
es. You see, q man with strong
stick in his hand can manage to hobble
along tolerably we'll, even though he
has only one lower limb to support
him, and if he has in addition a plain.
old fashioned wooden leg, not under.
mined by drink, as one of Dickens
characters says they sometimes be.
come, he can walk about we'll enough
to finish all the business that a one
legged man is ever likely To be nailAd
upon to do. Of course men knew this
long ago, but t is only lately that they
have taken it into their stupid heads
to immagine that one leg is better than
two, if the lie with which they account
for the loss of the missing one is only
sufficiently skillfully constructed to Be
credited.
1T is for this reason that have
taken to selling walking-sticks and
canes. False legs won't support me
any longer. Sir Walter Scott said:
Literature is a good walking stick,
but bad crutch.' 1t was a very good
crutch for him, however, but apart
from that little inconsistency he did not
weigh his words. A waIlling-stick is
crutch, more's the pity and chsap
one, too.
"Then, there are a great number oi
men who carry their love for elegant
canes into the regions of foppery,
whereas the best false leg that was
ever made was only intended to con
ceal its idenity. and could not be worn
more gracefully by a fop than BIZ
pensioned miner. Canes with silver
tops with which the market has been
glutted for the past two years, silver
being cheap; sticks so light that il the
fingers grasping them opened they
would be apt to fly up instead of falling
down; sticks so heavy that they serious
" handicap their owners in long
walk, and would disappoint both hound
and hunter by sinking if one Of them
were thrown into pond for water
dog to replevy; canes with the head of
the missing link on the handles
and canes without any handle at all.
They combine 70 knock the false leg
from under the men who tell the sane
story, whether they left limb on the
battlefield Of stsJ bur t,;;;;;f. s;;;s u the
vicinity of a Pennsylvania coal mine
Greenwood and lig2ans Uittg make the
favorite canes fer heavy men; bamboo
and malacca sticks are more in vogue
amongst light ones. The redwood q
British Columbia has recently come
into the market and makes about as
heavy stick as any wood known. II
has rich port-wine color. and is very
handsome. In the event of an argti-
ment, it would strike home when logic
fa;led, for it is as convincingly weighty
as a bar OF iron, and has great ad-
vantage over sword or a pistol, mas
much as it never misses fire, and rs
possessor can't cut or pierce himself by
falling upon it in an ungnarded mo
ment.
Another objection to the artificial
leg is that man walking with one
through the snow feels the cold in his
toes, although he has 40 toes 50 Ieei Z
in. lis very queer, but il Is an apso'
lutte fact. The sensation Of cnnl fe-
mains, even when three feet OF iron'
wood. cork, OF steel spans the space pe-
tween the cold earth and the senslisse
point Whether man wear well-
made artificial leg or an old-tssas
wooden peg. it is very necessary tnas